Must-read User Interface Book? [closed]

Question

I'm looking for a book that explains the basics of user interfaces and user experiences. I read Beautiful Visualization and Designing Interfaces from O'Reilly and I think they are very good. Can you recommend another one? Why?

Answer 1

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. The book is written in the way it preaches: very simple and easy to understand. The book covers a wide range of user experience topics. It's a must-read.

Answer 2

Don't forget the classic: Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things. Even though it is explicitly NOT about either web pages or computer applications, but about everyday things, there is so much there about common sense thinking about how people actually interact with things that I class it as a must-read.

Answer 3

• Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell
• About Face by Alan Cooper
• The Smashing Book by Smashing Magazine

Currently reading About Face. Really thorough and goes back to the basics of UI design.

Edit: Oops, just read you already read the first, but I leave it to be included if this turns into a full list of books.

Answer 4

Universal Principles of Design

Brilliant design book, especially useful for interface design.

Answer 5

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R Tufte is extremely useful for training your eyes to filter non-essential design elements and focus on the essence of the information.

Answer 6

I'd be remiss not to mention Joel Spolsky's User Interface Design for Programmers. There's an online version but the printed book has about 50% more material.

Answer 7

If you're interested specifically in forms, I can recommend Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski.

Answer 8

• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug.
• The Non-Designer's Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice by Robin Williams.

Also, while these aren't books, you may benefit from browsing some design pattern libraries. Each of these shows common patterns and explains when they are appropriate to use.

• Yahoo's Design Pattern Library
• Welie.com's Pattern Library
• UIPatterns

Answer 9

The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems by Jef Raskin

From the back cover:

This unique guide to interactive system design reflects the experience and vision of Jef Raskin, the creator of the Apple Macintosh. Other books may show how to use today's widgets and interface ideas effectively. Raskin, however, demonstrates that many current interface paradigms are dead ends, and that to make computers significantly easier to use requires new approaches. He explains how to effect desperately needed changes, offering a wealth of innovative and specific interface ideas for software designers, developers, and product managers.

Answer 10

Some favorites:

• Designing Web Interfaces by Bill Scott
• The Inmates Are Running The Asylum by Alan Cooper
• Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte (really any Tufte book)
• Designing the Obvious by Robert Hoekman
• Defensive Design by 37 Signals

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• The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin
• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• About Face by Alan Cooper
• Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski

Each of these books has taught me something new or given insight into how to do things better.

Top half not recommended by above posts.

Answer 11

Surprised that Krug's Rocket Surgery Made Easy has not been mentioned, given that Don't Make Me Think is so widely praised. RSME is just as good and useful in UI design.

An excerpt from the back cover: In this new book, Steve explains how to -

• Test any design, from a sketch on a napkin to a fully-functioning web site or application
• Keep your focus on finding the most important problems (because no one has the time or resources to fix them all)
• Fix the problems that you find, using his "The least you can do" approach

Answer 12

I'm really surprised that GUI Bloopers 2.0 hasn't been mentioned yet.

Answer 13

Take a look at sitepoint's The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. Also there are articles from this book here.

Smashing magazine published a book and it is a good one. take a look at it.

Answer 14

I highly recommend Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge. It's an impressive (if overwhelming at first) collection of interviews, essays, examples and case studies by one of the pioneers of interaction / interface design.

Answer 15

Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell

Design patterns for user interfaces. A great reference.

Answer 16

Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman Jr. is an excellent read.

From the back cover: Designing the Obvious belongs in the toolbox of every person charged with the design and development of Web-based software, from the CEO to the programming team. Designing the Obvious explores the character traits of great Web applications and uses them as guiding principles of application design so the end result of every project instills customer satisfaction and loyalty. These principles include building only whats necessary, getting users up to speed quickly, preventing and handling errors, and designing for the activity. Designing the Obvious does not offer a one-size-fits-all development process--in fact, it lets you use whatever process you like. Instead, it offers practical advice about how to achieve the qualities of great Web-based applications and consistently and successfully reproduce them.

Answer 17

All books Edward Tufte

Answer 18

For web sites, Eyetracking Web Usability might also be nice to add to the mix after the initial Krug stuff ^^

Answer 19

Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data by Stephen Few.

You can extend the design principles beyond dashboards per se, as they are ultimately reports and an interface to information.

Answer 20

Designing Web Interfaces is the most practical book on Interaction Design.

Answer 21

Well this isn't just for UI design, however I would recommend Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin (Former VP of Design at Cooper).

Alan Cooper describes it as the ultimate how-to book and I have to agree. It describes loads of methods and provides examples throughout. It goes through all the stages; research, modelling, requirements, framework, and design.

I have used it throughout my second year at university. It was great to understand the fundamentals of a usability method in class and then go to this book and be assured that every single detail would be available.

This book is huge! It is a great compliment to About Face 3 by Alan Cooper.

Answer 22

Screen Design Manual:

Communicating Effectively Through Multimedia

by Frank Thissen

Answer 23

One I'm really surprised isn't here is Jesse James Garrett's, "The Elements of User Experience."

http://www.jjg.net/elements/

Also, About Face 3 at http://www.cooper.com/#about:books - the book is good, very very detailed though. I really wonder about their site now, tho' ;-)

Answer 24

Currently my favourite list is:

Design in general

• The design of everyday thinks
• About Face 2
• Made to Stick
• Humane
• Emotional design
• The inmates are running the asylum

UI Design

• Dont make me think
• GUI Bloopers
• Designing Interfaces

Answer 25

• The Humane Interface Revolutionary, concise, and complete. The reason I do UX today.
• The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction Arguably the book that marked usability as it's own discipline, cited by 4,362 academic articles. Know your classics ; )
• The Essential Persona Lifecycle is an awesome book, a trimmed down version of the original bible of personas The Persona Lifecycle.
• The Minimal Manual is not really a book, but the general style that came from the academic work of Carroll so fully revolutionized manuals back in the 80's it's now the de-facto standard. However, it's exposition of how people really use documentation is something everyone should know, it will save you from making all sorts of naive assumptions when it comes to how people learn to use software and documentation!
• Handbook of Usability Testing The foundational bible of UI testing.

Answer 26

Read this White Paper: User Interface Analysis.

Answer 27

The Laws of Simplicity has probably been the most important UX book in my career. Some companies/sites don't really deal with the level of data complexity to require this kind of resource, but if you do, it's essential.

Answer 28

My top 3:

• Don't Make Me Think (Krug)
• Effective UI (Anderson, Mcree, Wilson)
• Designing Web Interfaces (Scott & Neil)

Above all, after reading any books I would go out and do field research. Check out top sites that have a nice, fluent interface to them. Using information from the book, ask questions about usability. Do they make you think too much? Are they visually appealing as well as functional?

Pick and choose the features you like to form your own standard based on what context you're designing in. There is no black and white answer to this as it's all interpretation.

Answer 29

Essential reading for anyone designing an accessible website today:

Designing with Progressive Enhancement: Building the Web that Works for Everyone

Answer 30

Tog on Interface should definitely be in your must read list.